TECH CHRONICLES

A daily dose of postings from The Chronicle's technology blog (sfgate.com/blogs/tech)

Ryan Kim

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, February 21, 2008

Get text-messaged directions here

Dial Directions of Alameda has been a cool little wireless player, offering people free text-message directions on their cell phone through voice activation. What the company has been pushing to do, though, is partner with other players that can show off its ability.

Enter Jingle Networks of Menlo Park, the people behind 1-800-FREE411. The two companies are teaming up, combining their services so mobile users can get their directory assistance and their directions from one source.

Here's how it works: You call 1-800-FREE411 and go through the ad-supported directory assistance. When you get to your listing, you'll have the option of getting the turn-by-turn directions text-messaged to you. Enter your starting location, either an address or some cross streets, and the directions come to you within seconds. And it's all free as long as you don't mind an ad tacked on to the end of your text message.

It makes a lot of sense to put the two together. You can still get your directions by literally dialing the word "directions" or (347) 328-4667. But this puts it all in one place.

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The service goes live March 1 in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and Chicago. Within 30 days after that, it will go nationwide. Expect to see other directory assistance services sign up with Dial Directions.

Zeemote: a wee little mobile controller

One of the biggest barriers for wide adoption of mobile games is the fact that a cell phone directional pad is often ill-suited to gaming. But Zeemote Inc. is trying to solve that with its remote joystick called the Zeemote JS1.

The wireless controller, about the size of two lighters, connects to a phone via Bluetooth and offers a user a full thumb joystick and two main buttons. It doesn't matter if you're left- or right-handed, the thing works fine in either case.

Zeemote is offering a software developer kit that allows game designers to easily integrate the Zeemote into their games. Sega, Eidos and Fishlabs are among the publishers that have signed on to produce games that work with the Zeemote.

I tried the Zeemote JS1 out at the Game Developers Conference, and I thought it worked well. You can play flying or racing games with the joystick, and it's very easy to move around. Try doing the same thing on a regular cell phone and it's frustrating and not very fulfilling.

You're probably not going to be doing supercomplex Street Fighter moves, but it's a very good way to just get around a screen on a side-scrolling game like Sonic.

The cool thing is you can have two players play one game simultaneously if you like. Fergus McNeill, CEO of Finblade, showed me a mobile tennis game they have that allows two players to compete.

Before the Zeemote, you could never really do this using just one phone. You can also have one player use a Zeemote and the other play with the directional pad.

Pricing is still up in the air, but Zeemote executives say they will keep it below $50 for a stand-alone purchase. It will launch in June and probably will be bundled with a phone and several games.